The present invention relates to data center infrastructure and operation, and more particularly, this invention relates to enabling virtual Link Aggregation (vLAG) in a network system which operates spanning tree protocol (STP).
Generally, link aggregation allows a networking system backbone speed to grow incrementally as demand on the network increases by aggregating multiple physical networking ports or links within a single switch into a single logical link. Any traffic which is bound for this single logical link may be distributed across the multiple physical ports. Many standards exist to dictate how these aggregated ports are treated, set up, etc. Some examples of existing standards are 802.3ad port aggregation with link aggregation control protocol (LACP), 802.1AX, etc. All physical ports in the link aggregation group must reside on the same physical switch, which in most scenarios will result in a single point of failure when the physical switch to which the physical links are connected goes offline. Link aggregation operates transparently to end-devices while providing redundancy and link resiliency for various networking protocols and speeds, e.g., Ethernet (10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, 1,000 Mbit/s, and/or 10 Gbit/s).
Therefore, there is a need for the ability to provide a quick and reliable method and system to prevent networking loops for the aggregation of multiple physical links spanning across at least two physical networking systems while still allowing for STP to be used in the network system.